Efficient use of the capital budget is one of the means to bring out economic growth and development. However, in Nepal, a significant proportion of capital budget remains unspent. In this context, the present study aims to explore the overall trends patterns and causes of low capital budget expenditure. Since the study is explorative in nature 21 different key informants have been purposively selected for open-ended semi-structured questionnaire guided in-depth interview in order to dig out the inner causes behind the low capital budget expenditure of Nepal. The response from the key informants has been content analyzed to generate 11 serious categories of factors that are responsible in low spending of capital budget that include budget planning, process, cultures, ethics and integrity, Implementation Capacity Deficiency, Procurement and Contract Management, Contractors' Professionalism and Competency, Geographical Complexities and Scarcity of Construction Materials, Managerial Aspects, Insufficient Stakeholder Analysis and Management , and Monitoring and Evaluation. The findings are useful particularly for budget planning and implementing authorities including outsourcing organizations.

Research Team: Shilu Pradhan and Anita Poudel
Abstract:
The study aims to identify the commitments and initiatives of GRB in Nepal, analyze the status of implementation of GRB and explore various lessons for Nepal for effective implementation of GRB initiatives. The research was carried out using the secondary data and also through primary data from key Informant Interviews of about eight stakeholders. Upon analysis of findings, it was found that a good initiative towards adopting GRB is taken by the Government of Nepal. However, various improvement areas are found for the effective implementation of the entire GRB process through the concerned authorities at Ministerial and sectorial line ministries.

Irrigation governance is one of the important aspects to understand the sustainability of the irrigation system. So, this study tried to provide a clear picture of the challenges of WUA of Bijayapur Irrigation System in irrigation governance. This study required qualitative data analyzed on the basis of common property regime and selected key elements of good governance. Being a case study, only two units namely WUA and irrigation development division are studied. The result obtained by the analysis shows the prevalence of the challenges faced by WUA in irrigation governance. The system (including WUA) is not economically autonomous and contains structural and non-structural issues related to the governance of the system. Stakeholders believe to increase irrigation service fee and shift of paradigm of irrigation management transfer principle to co-operative model. Furthermore, it also requires clear policy and legal provision for irrigation governance in changed context.

Doubtlessly, success and failure of local government is heavily reliant on politicians and bureaucrats relation. Both, politicians and bureaucrats have realized that their role is viable and prominent for effective and efficient local governance. In this regard, we explored politicians and bureaucrats’ relation in the changed socio-political and administrative setting of local governance. For this, we employed qualitative approach where the case study was adopted as a strategy of inquiry in three local level institutions (rural municipality, municipality and metropolitan city) by conducting an in-depth interview along with observation in 2018. The result of the study shows that the relation between bureaucrats and politicians is directed by political ideology and administrative appliance. Bureaucrats are highly focused on rules, regulations, and procedure with professional interdependence while politicians are focused on the development and welfare of local people. Hence, bureaucrats seem directly accountable to rule and regulation and indirectly to local people while politicians seem directly accountable to people as representatives. Politicians are conscious about rules and procedures for maintaining good governance but they also believe that these are not necessarily always applicable and valid in every situation. In contrary, bureaucrats reproached that politicians don't try to understand legal complications, technical hitches, and limitation of bureaucrats.

The e-commerce industry in Nepal is in the nascent stage but has shown tremendous potential over the last few years especially after competitive growth in the banking sector. The growing young, educated and technology friendly population has contributed largely to growing trends of e-commerce in Nepal. Buying and selling online has become a habit of people at a level which no one can escape and avoid. It will be either today or tomorrow the county like Nepal must have to design, develop and implement a sustainable business model to enable and promote the e-commerce practice. The main objective of the study is to analyze the existing landscape of e-commerce in Nepal in relation to various models of e-commerce to identify and define the applicable e-commerce model for Nepal in relation to the potential of e-commerce in the country.